One of the problems the executive and legislative branches of the Israeli government have faced over the years, was that the panel of Supreme Court justices repeatedly deciding against the elected government were often stacked with judges ideologically opposed to the coalition’s policies, guaranteeing the outcome in advance – and that wasn’t a random happenstance. It’s because the Chief Justice was able to decide in advance which and how many justices sat on the case.
For the past 20 years, the court has repeatedly claimed that the selection is mostly automatic, except for some “exceptional cases”. Based on the traditional, but non-legislated, seniority system, left-leaning Justice Yitzchak Amit is set to replace the left-leaning Esther Hayut as court president (Uzi Vogelman is likely to decline as he also retires soon), when Hayut retires on October 26.
That will perpetuate the court’s ideological bias against the coalition. Politically conservative Justice Yosef Elron has thrown his hat into the ring, tremendously annoying Hayut and her plans to smoothly transfer the court’s power to her ideological partner, but still, with all the political machinations going on, it’s unlikely that Elron has a chance.
Hence, Plan B.
Months ago, MK Simcha Rothman recognized that unstacking the judicial deck would help make the system a little more fair and balanced, particularly when the court president is a leftwinger, according to a report by Amit Segal.
As one of a number of judicial reform bills, Rothman proposed a law whereby the selection of justices on the judicial panels could not be selected at the discretion of the Chief Justice, but rather would be made exclusively by a selection from a computer. This is the system that is used by Israel’s Rabbinical Courts for selecting Dayanim (religious judges), and by various courts around the world.
While the number of activist and left-leaning justices currently outnumber the number of conservative justices on the Supreme Court, this at least would at least prevent an automatic preordained majority by the left on key cases.
Introducing this methodology won’t completely neuter the power of the Supreme Court president, but it will significantly reduce the court’s president’s ability to introduce ideological bias into every major court case against the government.
A fair and unbiased way to select judicial panels? You can bet the anti-democracy anarchists will be going to the streets over this one.
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